Droid, Your Bizarre Prompts Make It All Worthwhile
by janiejanine
Summary: A series of prompted SWTOR ficlets. The prompt that inspired each one is bolded at the top.
1. Look at Your Life, Look at Your Choices

**Inspired by this imagineyuorotp prompt: "Imagine Person A of your OTP walking downstairs at 4AM to find Person B making chocolate pudding because they've lost control of their life."**

Vette woke to the sound of clanking. Rubbing her eyes, she followed it down the cramped hallway, coming to a stop in the doorway of the small galley.

She rubbed her eyes again and blinked. Standing at the counter, with a bowl of something unidentifiable in one hand and a large spoon in the other, was Pierce.

"What is _that?_" she asked. The bowl was full of brown glop. It smelled okay, but it looked like he'd scooped it out of a sewer.

To her surprise, he didn't startle at the sound of her voice. Must be all that military discipline, or whatever. "Pudding."

She eyed it dubiously. "If you say so."

Pierce stirred the concoction and didn't reply. Vette looked away. That circular motion was hypnotic. "Isn't it kind of late?"

He gazed into the depths of the pudding as though it were a particularly disgusting sort of scrying bowl. "What am I doing?" he asked.

"Looks like you're trying to kill a bowl full of mud."

"Smart people _avoid_ the Sith. Not me. I asked to stay on." He stirred harder. A glob of pudding splattered against the wall.

Vette ignored it. "You did?"

He grunted. "I joined black ops 'cause I didn't want to be bossed. Now I'm under a Sith's thumb. By choice."

"Isn't everybody under the Sith's thumbs? At least we got a decent one," she pointed out.

He didn't respond. That was a good sign, Vette told herself.

She pressed on. "We don't have it so bad. What's the worst that could happen?" she asked. "Well, she could go crazy from the Dark Side and kill us all. But besides that."

"Lots of opportunity," Pierce said thoughtfully. The stirring slowed. "Be coming in right at the top."

"Leader of the strongest army the Empire's ever seen. You said it yourself."

He gave her a sharp look. "You heard that?"

Oops. Vette gave herself a mental smack in the forehead. What good was stealth if she couldn't keep her mouth shut? "I hear everything."

"What did you do, crawl through the ducts?"

The sooner they got off that subject, the better. "I'll be staying, too. Could be fun." She shrugged, feigning nonchalance. Thinking about the future wasn't something she did often - she was too busy jumping from place to place, from surrogate family to surrogate family - but she'd been lying awake nights wondering where she wanted to go after her time on this ship was up. She hadn't realized the answer was _nowhere_ until she'd heard it come out of her own mouth.

"Yeah?" he said, turning to face her.

"Yeah." She paused. "I was just hanging on until something better came along. But I think...this _is_ something better. I like it here."

"I do, too." He took the spoon out of the bowl and popped it in his mouth, then spit it out with a strangled _ghkk_.

Vette patted him sympathetically. "Come on," she said. "Let's go rearrange Captain Cranky's office. He hates that."

He slung a meaty arm over her shoulders and they headed down the hall, turning off the lights behind them. The pudding lay abandoned.


	2. Patched Up

**The Trooper, "heal me".**

"Hold still, sir," Elara admonished. She prided herself on her steady hand, but Taren wasn't making it easy, twitching as the cold kolto packs hit her skin and flinching at the squishy, unpleasant texture of the synthflesh.

"You do good work, Dorne," Taren said woozily. "Had some medics before that weren't so good." She tapped the metal plate where her left eye used to be.

Elara made a mental note to check for concussion before they returned to the base. "If you don't mind my asking, sir...how did that happen?" she asked.

Taren shrugged. "Not much to tell. Ran into a pack of vrblthers. Didn't get out of the way in time."

"Aren't those only found on Nar Shaddaa?"

"So I've heard."

"That must have been an interesting deployment," Elara said, doing her best to probe without sounding like she was probing.

"It was before I enlisted." Taren looked away.

"That doesn't seem like your sort of place."

"It wasn't." Taren's rueful smile bent one of the long, straight scars on the side of her face out of shape.

Elara considered questioning further - she was especially curious to know about the non-military medic who'd done such a shoddy job - but she supposed it wasn't fair to take advantage of someone who'd already been banged up.

She focused on her work. She didn't intend to leave scars if she could help it.


	3. At the Killik Ball

**Vector/Imperial Agent, "Drink Me".**

_It seemed like a good idea at the time._ That was the only excuse that Cipher Nine, Imperial Intelligence's top operative, could come up with for finding herself drunk, maudlin, and surrounded by dancing bugs.

An agent had to be open to new experiences, she told herself. If the killiks invited her to a celebration, it was her duty to go. It had nothing whatsoever to do with her companion.

There wasn't much conversation, as was only to be expected with a species that communicated telepathically, but the singing was surprisingly beautiful, and the food was actually rather good. So were the drinks.

"Gold membrosia" sounded so soft and sweet, like something you'd sip at the end of a formal dinner. In reality, it packed a punch that could drop a bantha.

She squeezed her eyes shut. This was embarrassing. Holding her liquor was part of her _job_, for kark's sake; she could match a target drink for drink until they spilled any information she wanted, but she'd never encountered anything like this.

Bug milk. Who would've thought it?

She took another drink. It was thick, like honey, and pleasantly spicy. She wondered what the killiks tasted when they drank it.

Vector hadn't left her side all night, sticking close to explain anything that was culturally significant. It was kind of him, but, she supposed, it wasn't much of an inconvenience when one could speak to anyone simply by thinking at them. Still, she appreciated the effort, and she was taking the opportunity to steal little glances at him when no one was looking. They'd gotten less and less subtle as the evening went on, but she'd lost the ability to care somewhere around the fourth cup. Especially since, more often than not, he was glancing back.

She could _tell_ when he was looking at her, even without pupils.

That - actually, all of it - had taken some getting used to. Vector was odd. But then, _she_ was odd. Her entire life was odd. In a way, it made perfect sense.

A relationship with him meant millions of insectoids coming along for the ride, but that was all right. If anyone could sympathize with having voices in your head, she could. Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea after all.

She stared into her cup. Being with Vector always made her feel a little off-kilter, and the drink just magnified it. Perhaps if she stood very still, no one would notice.

She wasn't sure how long she watched the shining contents of her cup slosh from side to side, but it must have been a while, because when she looked up, she met Vector's gaze, his brows drawn together with concern. "Agent, are you all right? Your aura is flickering."

"Is it?" she asked vaguely.

"Yes. And your pheromones are...unusual."

She fought the absurd urge to giggle. "I'm afraid I'm compromised."

"So we see." He held out a hand. "Perhaps we should get back to the ship."

"That's a good plan." She drew a deep breath to compose herself and took his arm, trying not to lean on him too heavily.

"Vector?" she said.

"Yes, Agent?"

"What does membrosia taste like to you?"

He paused and considered before replying. "Sunlight. Dew. The grasses of Alderaan. It tastes of the spawnworld; all killiks know it, even those who have never seen it."

"That sounds lovely." Navigating under her own steam was too much effort, so she gave up and rested her head on his shoulder.

"It is difficult to explain to those outside of the nest."

"Shame," she murmured into his sleeve. "I can't see myself Joining, but sometimes it sounds a bit tempting."

"You are as you are. We wouldn't wish you to be otherwise."

"Was that a compliment?"

"It was meant as one." He smiled. "Our apologies. We aren't as good at them as we once were."

"You're doing just fine. Please, continue," she said. While she knew, intellectually, that he was just as much human as killik, it could be easy to forget. When he smiled, the man he had been shone through, and he was even more appealing.

The cool night air was clearing her head. She could feel herself starting to sober up, and for all she knew Vector could smell the change, but she didn't move away. Tomorrow would bring new problems. Soon she'd sink back into work. Until then, she had no intention of letting go.


End file.
